column store

Definitions

1. A database storage architecture that stores data by column rather than by row, enabling dramatic compression ratios and query performance for analytical workloads that touch few columns but many rows. Column stores power data warehouses like BigQuery, Redshift, and ClickHouse. The tradeoff is slower single-row operations compared to row stores.

   In plain English: A database that stores data by column instead of by row — much faster for analytics questions like 'what's the average salary?' because it only reads the salary column.

   Example: The column store compressed 2TB of raw event data down to 200GB because most columns have highly repetitive values that compress beautifully.

Related Terms

• time-series database
• graph database
• data lake
• Master-Slave
• ClickHouse